All images courtesy of World AeroPress Championship.
The organizers of the American AeroPress Championship are putting together a multi-city tour-de-manual-force to celebrate the brewing device’s 20th birthday.
Regional events will be held between September and October in Los Angeles, Austin (Texas), Seattle and New York City before a final national championship in San Francisco on Oct. 26. The U.S. champion will then join scores of other national champs from all over the globe at the World AeroPress Championship in Seoul in December.
Organizers say each of the U.S. events will include sips of unlimited coffees from local and national roasters, with names such as Sey Coffee, Stumptown Coffee Roasters, Equator Coffees, Caffe Vita, Verve Coffee Roasters and Black Fox Coffee.
Of course, the event will also feature the signature rapid-fire, multi-round elimination tournament, in which competitors have five minutes to put forth their best AeroPress brew. Judges then taste the brew, count to three, point their fingers at their faves, and whoever doesn’t win is eliminated.
This will be the 13th annual AeroPress championship to take place in the U.S., continuing what has become one of coffee’s most surprisingly robust and enduring competition series. As legend has it, the first-ever AeroPress Championship took place on a whim in Oslo, Norway, with only three competitors and renowned Nordic roaster Tim Wendelboe as the judge.
The popularity of the competition has even baffled the AeroPress brewer’s inventor and founder, retired Stanford lecturer Alan Adler, who first brought the AeroPress to market in 2005. (Note: Adler is not directly affiliated with the American or World AeroPress Championships.)
At the time, Adler’s main business activities were focused on his wildly successful invention, the Aerobie Flying Ring. In a 2017 interview with DCN, Adler said the endurance of an AeroPress competition was “especially amazing” given his efforts to promote distance competitions with the flying toy.
“I invented a flying ring that flew farther than any human-thrown object in the world, and I tried to create world championships around that, but they never really got off the ground,” Adler told DCN in 2017.
Here are the dates and locations of the 2025 American AeroPress events:
Qualifiers
Sept. 21 – Los Angeles
Mica Studios / 12-5 p.m.
Sept. 28 – Austin
The Sunset Room / 12-5 p.m.
Oct. 5 – Seattle
KEXP Gathering Space / 12-5 p.m.
Oct. 12 – New York City
Atolye NYC / 12-5 p.m.
The Final
Oct. 26 – San Francisco
The Foundry / 12-6 p.m.
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